The fight to preserve Norm’s on La Cienega Boulevard, the chilly reception for Zaha Hadid’s Olympic Stadium design and George Lucas’ plan to keep L.A. as a plan B for his museum — there’s a whole lot of architecture going down in the Roundup this week. But there’s also follow-up on the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a report about Damien Hirst’s art on Mars and a bot that writes about art. Which makes me think that maybe I don't need to come to work anymore...

Architect Jean Nouvel said that he won't attend the opening of his new Philharmonie de Paris concert hall in an editorial that he wrote for the French daily Le Monde.
In the article, which was published Wednesday, he contends that the hall is opening...

When it opens to the public in 2015, the long-awaited Louvre Abu Dhabi will display works by Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and many more thanks to a loan of 300 pieces from prominent French institutions.
The loan, which officials...

The United Arab Emirates has been designated the "featured guest country" at the 2015 L.A. Art Show, scheduled for Jan. 14-18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
A special exhibition,"Past Forward: Contemporary Art from the Emirates" will mark the...

Dudamel sings!
It is a rare playful moment in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's nasty yet startlingly illuminating new production of "Così fan Tutte" and a tiny surprise, which I have now spoiled.
But at its most elevated, opera is an art form...

The Los Angeles Philharmonic's production of the Mozart-Da Ponte opera "Così fan tutte" arrives on stage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday with a hard-edged futurism and a note of nostalgia.
It's the third production in as many years to unite the orchestra under the baton of kinetic music director Gustavo Dudamel with staging by director Christopher Alden, one of opera's revisionists known for injecting contemporary urgency into his productions.
It's also the finale in a trilogy of late...

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced plans this month to build a new wing spanning Wilshire Boulevard.
It also wants to build up — way up.
The museum is working on an ambitious proposal for a skyscraper near the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue, on land partly owned by LACMA across from its main campus.
Museum officials envision the tower, rising above a planned Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway station at Wilshire and Orange Grove Avenue, as having a hotel and...

Work is finally underway on a long-delayed $300-million residential skyscraper on a prime parcel at the gateway to Century City and Beverly Hills.
The 39-story apartment tower is being built by Miami developer Crescent Heights at 10000 Santa Monica Blvd. years after a high-profile struggle for the land that has long been considered one of the most valuable development sites in the country.
Century City is among the top office markets in the region, home to many well-known entertainment businesses...

Jean Nouvel Photos

Jean Nouvel, the French architect, is credited with creating "installations" for the Los Angeles Philharmonic production of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," although "transformations" would be more accurate. Azzedine Alaïa designed the striking costumes. The result is a stunningly high style and wonderfully performed French "Figaro" that customized Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday night in more ways than one.
But since when do the French have a problem with French fries?
The most noticeable...

So what will Jean Nouvel do? For the Los Angeles Philharmonic production of “Marriage of Figaro,” the second in Gustavo Dudamel’s cycle of the Mozart operas with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte, the famed French architect will design installations as a set for the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage, as Frank Gehry did with his wondrous billowing crumpled paper sculptures for “Don Giovanni” a year ago.
What will the Paris-based Tunisian avant-garde clothes designer Azzedine...

Suffice to say that Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte weren't thinking about Proposition 8 when they composed "The Marriage of Figaro."
The 1786 comic opera follows bullying Count Almaviva's efforts to invoke droit du seigneur to sexually conquer Susanna, bride-to-be of his right-hand man Figaro, on the couple's wedding night: a licentious sendup of European aristocracy with a simmering soupçon of class warfare to rouse the rabble.
But to hear it from Christopher Alden, boundary-pushing...